Bounty Hunter III

A light in the darkness

"Get out or the energy cannons may be the next thing to malfunction"

As most of the team waited for Fenki Tarshi aka Rat, F’erisl S’stylakn aka F’eri, and Alexia to return from the military base, placeholder (Joey’s character) was grabbed by a strange portal. (Mau) Mautrylic Baytt aka Mau was also consumed by a portal, which saved him from the assassin who had been about to stab him in the back. After a short violent skirmish Tret and Jack were able to kill the assassin but not before it mutilated Meizya’s torso, putting him in critical condition.

F’eri and Alexia were apprehended by the hover plane as they fled from the base. Rat was able to slip away into the hills thanks to her natural camouflage. The rest of the team back at the spaceport was taken into custody a short time later. The entire team with the exception of Rat were imprisoned until The Dude’s newest hire, a hacker named placeholder (Madeline’s character) was able to manipulate the Vonwaz government systems and had the team pardoned. As law-enforcement officials grudgingly transported the team out of the system of planets, an airlock malfunction caused Jack to be sucked out into space, killing him. Rat had to buy her way off world on a merchant ship.

The team made the trip to meet up with The Dude and deliver the document they had stolen. Rat received a message from the universe’s foremost group of professional thrill seekers offering her a position on their tour. Rat immediately accept the position and said her goodbyes to the team as she left to begin her new career. Alexia also received word that because The Dude had hired a new hacker to work with the team she had been transferred to a different part of his organization. She also said her goodbyes and left.

When the team arrived at The Dude’s luxury housing at the top of one of the spires on a Metropolis planet, they met the two new team members The Dude had arranged to replace Jack and Rat. Placeholder (Brenan’s new character) and placeholder (Matthew’s new character). They also met the hacker who had saved them and would be joining the team.

After a couple days off The Dude told the team he would be sending them into an alternate dimension to get the document they had stolen translated. The teleportation ritual went off without a hitch and the team found themselves, to their surprise, in an idyllic forest meadow. F’eri used her powers to teleport into the air and spotted a castle in the distance that seemed to be in flames but was not smoking at all. The team decided to head towards the anomaly, but on the way they were attacked by four demonic snakes. The snakes’ backs were covered in long spines. Whenever the snakes bit into their prey they began to puff up and became explosive. After the team defeated the snakes they collected themselves, treated their wounds, and prepared to head off towards the castle.

Team Cube!

As the team approach the shack (Mau) Mautrylic Baytt aka Mau and Meizya came tumbling out portals, they both immediately got up and rejoined the group. Everyone seemed relatively unfazed by their reappearance. When the team entered the shack, they were greeted by a grisly sight: Bodies with their torsos split open lined the walls. Mitch Zotto was huddled over a makeshift table scratching runes into a piece of leather. After a short exchange in which he claimed to be a minion of a demon, he attacked the team Fenki Tarshi aka Rat and F’erisl S’stylakn aka F’eri engaged him in a melee that lasted a few seconds until Jack leveled his rifle and blew off Zotto’s head.

The sound of the rifle shot alerted local authorities. The Dude told the team he wanted the body, so they worked quickly to recover it and get off Zennin without being apprehended. Meizya made a bomb and left the shack with Rat to try and get one of the brain tappers to take the explosive device to a nearby tram station and detonated it to cause a distraction. As Meizya was putting the finishing touches on the trigger Rat noticed a squad of Pro-Crop soldiers moving down the street towards the shack. She told Meizya to set the explosives on a short fuse and run, this spooked Meizya, and he set the explosives to detonate immediately. He just managed to hurl the bomb away before it detonated.

The soldiers quickly apprehended Meizya, unconscious and severely injured. They also stopped Rat as she attempted to flee the scene. The soldiers took Mau into custody when he wandered into the street. Rat, Meizya and Mau were held by the soldiers until their identities could be confirmed. They then made a stop by the med clinic to get Meizya the emergency medical care he needed. After that they made their way to the spaceport.

Jack, F’eri, and Tret fled the shack, and using a roundabout way made it to the shopping district that surrounded the spaceport. F’eri teleported inside the spaceport that had been locked down because of the explosion. Once she had made her way to the team’s ship, she was told by a mechanic no launches would be allowed until the lock down had been lifted. She was able to talk the mechanic into arranging a meeting with the spaceport manager, she had the manager call The Dude who was able to convince him to allow the team to leave Zennin.

Tret made his way into the back of a restaurant to try and find some large wrappings for the body. Jack entered the front of the restaurant and attempted to cause a distraction by talking to the matre d’, when it became apparent this distraction plan was not working he gave up and left. Tret was able to find some wrappings for large pieces of meat, he concealed the body and left the restaurant without incident. Tret and Jack joined the rest of the team at the spaceport and left the Zennin to meet up with The Dude on his boat on the largely water covered planet placeholder.

During this meeting The Dude introduced the team to yet another new member named placeholder. He also briefed the team on the next job which would involve going to the Vonwaz system, and stealing a piece of information from before the dark age. The alien race that inhabits the Vonwaz system are extremely insular, not allowing any communication with the rest of the galaxy from their planets. They only deal with outsiders to trade in rare resources and valuable pieces of information or art from before the dark age.

The team decided to pose as a group of guards and art critics who made purchases for The Dude through the fictitious group D Industries. The Dude set up a 12 billion credit account for D industries, legitimizing the teams cover.

After a brief meeting with an ambassador from the Vonwaz government, the team was cleared and proceeded to the planets surface. They got their bearings on the surface and collected information on the military base they would have to infiltrate. Several team members decided to go shopping, F’eri bought some close to help blend in with the populace. Meizya found a junk shop, as he was going over the merchandise one of the items he picked up, a strange cube covered in little lines and circles, stuck to his hand. When he was unable to remove the cube the store owner sold it to him, and he returned to the ship.

The team come up with a plan that involved splitting into three groups, the members of group one; Rat, F’eri, and Alexia would infiltrate the military base and steal the document from before the dark age. The members of group two; Mau, Jack, and placeholder would visit the art galleries in the city to maintain groups cover as prospective buyers. The members of group three; Mau, and Tret decided to stay on the ship and try to figure out what the prepuce of the strange cube was. The first thing he discovered was that the cube seemed to be bound to him somehow, no other group member could so much as lift it off the ground. The cube would also follow Meizya around, it even punched through the door of the ship’s safe when he locked it inside.

Group one made the trek to the isolated military base. When they arrived, they decided to enter through an emergency exit on the roof. F’eri teleported past the rooftop trap door, and used her VI to help Alexia hack a security terminal and disable the alarm built into the rooftop emergency exit. Rat disabled the laser grid guarding the roof with her supernatural power and rushed inside. Alexia remained outside in the hills to provide support. Disaster nearly struck when a security team was dispatched to look into why the security grid on the roof had gone off-line. Luckily, thanks to the short duration of Rat’s power the grid came back online quickly, and the security patrol was called back.

Group two decided to start their search in one of the upscale galleries. In the first gallery, a piece titled The Destruction of Old Terra, priced at 5 billion credits, caught their eye. It was a three-part holographic artwork that depicted an artist’s imagining of the legendary planet in its heyday, as a corrupted, dying world, and finally crumbling away into nothingness. The group seriously contemplated buying this piece, but decided to put a hold on it and check another gallery.

After fiddling with the cube and discovering that strange lines and circles that covered the outside could be turned into demonic runes, group three tried heating the cube which resulted in the runes glowing. It also caused the cube to shake, and cracks appeared on the surface. After several other experiments, one of which involved attempting to smash the cube with a hammer, resulting in the hammer shattering and a defiantly intact cube. The team finally decided to heat the cube for an extended period of time to see what would happen. After prolonged exposure to a heat source the increasingly violent shaking and cracking resulted in the cube spraying metal fragments around the room, some of these struck Meizya in the face, causing large purple welts.

Rat planted explosives in some offices on the top level. The group then proceeded towards the basement of the military compound where the document was in storage. Thanks to a stroke of good luck most of the base personnel were at lunch, making this part of the infiltration mission very easy. As Rat and F’eri searched the storage room for the document, someone in the base finally noticed them. Rat hit the trigger for the explosives she had planted, but something went wrong and nothing happened. A security team burst into the room and Rat and F’eri, who had just found the document, fled out a door on the other side of the storage area. As they rounded a corner they came face-to-face with most of the base personnel that had just finished lunch, after a moment of staring at each other in confusion, Rat and F’eri sprinted off in the other direction. Alexia told them that the base had initiated a lock down and they would have to follow her instructions to get back to the top level.

As Rat and F’eri arrived on the top level, they were confronted by one of the special forces soldiers garrisoned in the base. The man was staggering along the hallway in full combat armor carrying a heavy energy pistol. He had large, purple-tinted burns across his face. He engaged the duo in combat, lashing out with strikes imbued with demonic fire. After a short vicious melee in which both sides exchanged wounds, they were able to kill the soldier and make their escape through the roof of the base and into the hills. As they fled, they heard the ominous sound of a hover plane’s engine starting.

Team two found another piece in the second gallery they surveyed. This one was an extremely detailed holographic image. An artists imagining of ancient periods on Old Terra. Priced at 10 billion credits, It was titled Points in the Desert. The team decided to buy this extremely valuable piece of art, then returned to the ship. Groups two and three were resting on the ship waiting for group one, when Meizya noticed an assassin who had just disengaged a stealth field was about to stab Mau in the back.

Here is a link to the google doc if you see anything that needs fixing. Be nice I work hard on this stuff. =D

One planet down, a hell of a lot more to go.

Tret, a new team member recently recruited by The Dude had a meeting with his new employer. When it became clear the team’s current mission will take longer than was originally anticipated, The Dude sent Tret to meet with the team on placeholder.

The wall of the maintenance tunnel exploded, filling the hallway with wispy black smoke, and exposing a portal with a long armed demon minion emerging from it. At the same moment, Fenki Tarshi, aka Rat, fell from a portal in the ceiling. She immediately jumped up and after a short skirmish killed the demon minion. The rest of the wall crumbled away exposing more portals, all spewing demon minions. Rat, F’erisl S’stylakn, aka F’eri, and Alexia Stillwell all attempted to flee the tunnel, but they were quickly subdued by Emperor entertainment security automatons responding to the disturbance.

After a quick talk with security, the three team members were cited for breaking entertainment complex rules and charged a small fine. They where then released outside the complex with the rest of the people who had been evacuated. The Dude instructed the team to watch local media and use whatever other methods they could come up with to figure out exactly what was happening inside the entertainment complex. The complex was in full lockdown and no one would say a word about what was going on inside.

F’eri set about using her VI system to scour local media, Jack and Alexia returned to the hotel to relax. Rat met with a local group of adrenaline junkies hoping to talk them up for information. While at the meeting she attempted a very dangerous jump from one of the Metropolis planets spires. She had a mishap on the way down resulting in the loss of an arm. Thanks to the heroics of one the other jumpers, she did not fall to her death. After some wrangling with The Dude over medical care costs, she entered a 12 hour surgery to regrow her arm.

Thanks to some new video that had been leaked to the media, it became clear that this was much more than a simple anomaly. The inside of the entertainment complex was being ripped apart by invading demon minions. The Dude instructed the team to leave the planet as soon as Rat was out of surgery. He told them to pass the time trying to figure out the extent of the invasion.

Tret arrived on the planet. After a short encounter with Jack who had been drinking and was irresponsibly intoxicated, he joined F’eri and they set out to infiltrate the entertainment complex and find the extent of the damage. After entering the building through a low-level maintenance tunnel, they discovered squads of soldiers holding off waves of demonic minions. They also discovered that the inside of the building was being torn apart by demonic portals.

The demonic portals began to spread outside of the entertainment complex, and panic rapidly seized the district. The terrified masses attempted to flee to the spaceport. Tret and F’eri rushed towards the hospital to retrieve Rat mid-surgery, and get off of the planet. After the team collected Rat it became apparent that they would not be able to get into the spaceport due to the massive human gridlock surrounding it. The team contacted The Dude who was able to arrange for a freelance pilot to pick them up and get them off world. On the way off world Rat rescued a nondescript woman with her grappling gun. The team flew away from the planet just in time as its surface was consumed by seething masses of demonic portals. They dropped woman at a nearby space station.

The team met with The Dude back at his mansion on Rysios 4. He informed the team he needed them to run down another lead on his old friend Mitch Zotto. This time the mission would be investigating Zotto’s home.

Upon arriving on the planet placeholder, the team started by hacking into government records see if Mitch Zotto had any family living in his residence on the planet. Alexia was able to loop the feed of the cameras on the outside of local government records building, allowing F’eri and Rat to take down the security guard patrolling the perimeter. As Tret and Jack infiltrated the building, Rat and F’eri took the unconscious security guard back to his residence, leaving him there.

With the help of Tret’s pet lizard the infiltration team was able to incapacitate the record building receptionist and give Alexia access to her terminal. She was quickly learned that Zotto’s wife and two children still lived in the residence on the planet.

When they first arrived at the Zotto residence, they spoke with the familys’ servant who informed them that Mr. Zotto had been missing for about two weeks. She also said that Mr. Zotto’s wife Margaret would not be home from work until later that day. As the team waited for Zotto’s wife to return, Alexia hacked their home network revealing that over the last two weeks Zotto had been sending strange, garbled e-mails to his wife.

After a brief meeting with Margaret. The team learned that Zotto had left two weeks earlier to check on a branch of his import-export business on an industrial world called Zennin.

The team took the short spaceship flight to the planet Zennin. After inquiring at an information kiosk in the spaceport, the team set out to investigate the Emperor Entertainment Suits he had checked into. Rat on the other hand set off to explore a tip she had gotten about a place to “have fun” in the nearby workers habitation block.

Upon locating Zotto’s room in the hotel with the help of the manager, the team discovered it had been ransacked. Strange runes had been cut into the furniture. Wherever the wallpaper had been ripped away, the walls were bleeding, as if the wallpaper had been skin. But perhaps the oddest thing about the room was that the bed was completely untouched.

When Tret ripped the blankets off the bed, runes that had been cut into the mattress burst into flame conjuring a shadowy apparition. The specter proceeded to deliver a message of doom and the end of all reality, as it attacked the group with energy beams. Jack tried to disrupt the runes by shooting them. Tret dumped the blankets he pulled off the bed into the bathtub soaking them in bloody water and then tossed them on the bed to extinguish the fire.

Rat tracked down the address she had been given and discovered it was a den of brain tappers. She decided the practice looked too sedentary for her tastes, and set off to rendezvous with the team at an address they discovered, scribbled frantically in blood, at the foot of the bed in Zottos hotel room.

The team met up close to the address they had found. It was a small shack just off the edge of one of the hab blocks. As they approached the shack something began slowly opening the door from the inside.

After undergoing the various rituals to receive their supernatural powers, and appearing back in the real world. With the exception of Fenki Tarshi aka Rat who was kidnapped by a strange force just before the training began. The heroes were all instructed to report to The Dude’s mansion on Rysios 4. The team was informed that they would need to pick a tech expert to join them. The dude presented them with three possible candidates Jim Marcus,Xavier Hendrix and Alexia Stillwell. After some debate the team decided on Alexia because of her background in the corporate world and knowledge of VI programming.

(Mau) Mautrylic Baytt aka Mau and Meizya both decided to explore the mansion. Finding several strange artifacts, A very dangerous placeholder garbage disposal, and a moving tapestry that attempted to consume anything that touched it.

F’erisl S’stylakn aka F’eri and Jack decided to go to the pub in the quaint village just down the road from the mansion. At the pub they sampled local beers and meat pies. Mau was practicing his acrobatics and parkour on the buildings in the village drawing a lot of funny looks from the villagers. After their meal F’eri and Jack stopped into one of the tourist shops in the village. Somewhere along the line they decided to go hunting, and purchased several books to help with this endeavor.

Not long after they entered the forest F’eri and Jack discovered a Sabertooth Bear. F’eri attempted to sneak up on the animal while Jack covered her with his submachine gun. The sabertooth noticed F’eri at the last moment in the fight began. After a short scuffle with F’eri in which they treated wounds, Jack opened fire striking the bear in the head. As the melee continued the sabertooth eventually knocked F’eri to the ground and proceeded to bull rush the annoying man who had been pestering it with a submachine gun. While this first rush was unsuccessful, the bear eventually managed to pin Jack to a tree goring him in the process. After several more unsuccessful attempts to shoot and stabbed the animal by the hunters. Jack called upon his supernatural abilities, and shot a beam of death into the bears head. This finally did the beast in. With the help of some of The Dude’s robots, Jack who was unconscious due to massive gut trauma and the corpse of the Sabertooth Bear were moved back to The Dude’s mansion. The team dined on a three-course dinner of bear that night.

The next morning The Dude briefed the team on the next job he had for them. The Dude told them he believed an old friend of his was in trouble. The last contact he had with the man was a video of somebody scratching demonic symbols in the service tunnels of a large casino in the entertainment district of the metropolis world placeholder.

The team arrived at the casino after an uneventful trip. The casino or entertainment complex was a massive building owned by the Emperor Entertainment. It contained several different hotels, gambling floors, high quality restaurants, bars and clubs.

The first door the team found into the maintenance tunnels was guarded by an Emperor entertainment security automaton® (hereafter referred to as security bots). F’eri used her supernatural powers and, after a slight mishap, teleported into the maintenance tunnel leaving a confused security bot behind her.

Mau stood there bewildered by the bright lights and loud music of the gambling floor. Meizya and Alexia attempted to hack the security panel of the second maintenance door they had found. When Alexia’s attempt at a quick manual hack failed Meizya instructed her to set a fire in the destroyed panel. Meanwhile Meizya and Jack worked to distract the two security bots who had been alerted. They convinced the security bots that an electrical explosion occurred in the panel and received complementary slot machine play for their trouble.

Mau overcame his bewilderment and attempted to con his way into a kitchen in the complex. This attempt started out very well thanks the stupidity of a certain waiter. But came to an end when the chef requested to see his entertainment complex credential. Mau claimed he was looking for work and the chef directed him to the HR department.

As F’eri explored the maintenance tunnels of the entertainment complex, she encountered a maintenance robot. The robot instructed her to remain calm and it would escort her to the exit. After several attempts to teleport out of the robots vision with mixed results, it instructed her to stay put and called security.

Back on the main gambling floor of the entertainment complex Jack created a distraction by complaining to a floor manager about glitches with a security bots. This allowed Meizya and Alexia to hack the control panel and slip into the maintenance tunnels. In the tunnels they found a security terminal, which Alexia was able to hack and shut down the robots that had taken F’eri into custody. She was also able to download floor plans of the complex and send them to all of the team members.

Upon receiving these floor plans and being free from the security bots F’eri took off running towards the point that the demonic etching message had been sent from. Meizya and Alexia followed, now escorted by the hacked maintenance robot.

When he arrived at the HR department Mau was told the casino needed a dancer in one of its clubs. He excepted the job. After a failed attempt to con his way into the maintenance tunnels set off to meet his new employers.

When F’eri arrived at the spot the message was sent from she found the etchings on a pipe running along the ceiling, along with some bloodstains on the floor. She also noticed a spiderweb pattern of cracks in the wall which seem to be moving, shaking loose pieces to reveal a black spot behind the wall. As Meizya Alexia and their hacked maintenance robot rounded the corner and entered the hallway the black spot on the wall exploded outwards violently.

The team rested that night and started the long trip to Colony One the next morning. When they arrived on the planet the team purchased the licenses and hazmat equipment they would need to leave the safe zone. They were able to locate two possible factories that could manufacture the beverage The Dude requested they retrieve.

The team decided to split up sending Rat and F’eri to investigate an ancient protein shake factory. Mau, Jack and Meizya set off to investigate an archaic soda factory. the investigation of the shake factory ultimately proved fruitless and ended abruptly when the other team was attacked by a cultist and his pet robot in the soda factory. Exploring an upper floor of the building Meizya found the cultist sleeping in an office, when Jack attempted to investigate further the robot struck him in the head destroying his helmet and knocking him unconscious. It then chased Meizya down a hallway, catching up to and slamming him into the wall. Mau heard the sounds of the combat and rushed over to see what was happening. Arriving at a perfect moment to distract the cultist and robot long enough to allow Meizya to shoot the cultist in the back with his energy pistol, killing him instantly and setting his corpse on fire. Then fry the robots sensory node causing it to flail about on the floor.

Rat and F’eri arrived on the scene minutes later and Rat was able to apply the necessary first aid to Jack to prevent his injury from becoming more serious. In the cultists room the team found several tomes full of runes that cause them to become sick to their stomach if they studied them. Rat would later remove the tomes and take them with her from the planet. The team was able to get the factory’s main plant up and running. Making several bottles of the precious soda.

As the team moved back through the ruins towards the safe zone, Jack fell to his knees blood gushing from the wound on his head. some of the more observant team members noted a small chip of metal fall from the wound land on the ground, it grow and changed into a round monster the size of a small beach ball with masses of tentacles protruding from it and one glaring eye. ( Okay that sounds really funny when I write it out like this). The team engaged the monster in what was at first a indecisive battle, neither Rat nor F’eri could land a decisive blow with their blades, the monster was also unable to inflict any wounds with it spiked tentacles. The rest of the group was either hiding or unable to get a clear shot with their guns due to the melee. finally at almost the same time Rat and F’eri both struck decisive blows killing the monster and spraying all those in close proximity with a thick black blood like substance, a substance that stained Jack’s unprotected face as he had recently charged in to join the melee. As the defeated monster fell to the ground it melted away before the groups eyes.

Upon arrival back at the safe zone the group received necessary treatment for the exposure to radiation and toxic chemicals. Jack received medical treatment for his head wound, but the doctor could not remove the black staining from his face. The team made it back to The Dude, who was very happy with the soda they had retrieved him. He then told the team that this had been a test of their capabilities and a willingness to stick with the seemingly pointless contract. He also explained that he would help the adventurers gain special powers if they agreed to work exclusively for him. As the team contemplated if they wanted to accept this life changing offer, Rat decided to base jump off the side of The Dudes mansion into the dangerous jungle below. After an awkward landing she had a close encounter with a troop of Pygmy Drooltrap Monkeys, but was able to escape unharmed and returned to the mansion. All the members of the team agreed to accept The Dudes offer, and began to undergo the various rituals. But that’s a story for a different entry.